Over 2 years ago, I read among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started wrecking Beehiiv Features.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out different email and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it very easy to create and send emails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately located the ideal device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it pertained to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter creators look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any creator understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) commonly indicates using multiple various devices to help accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a system that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content developer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Features
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot a lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send emails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to ahead your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Features.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several users.
I’m unsure exactly how the system business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply add added costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent solution for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose review articles usually. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.